


Ransom of a Dead Chief

by keysburg



Series: Dead spies tell no lies [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Bourbon - Freeform, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Implied Sexual Content, Inspired by..., Kidnapping, O. Henry, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-10-27 01:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10798641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysburg/pseuds/keysburg
Summary: Some enterprising men kidnap Jack, but they have no idea what they are getting themselves into...Prompted by peonymoss to write Jack in a story like "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Henry... Happy Birthday!Takes place between Jack Thompson is Dead* and Dead Men don't Wassail so approximately Nov 1947





	Ransom of a Dead Chief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paeonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paeonia/gifts).



It sounded like a good offer, but don’t they always? When the fellow found us, Billy and I were having a quiet drink and minding our own business, which is to say that I had just cleaned up at the poker table. The minute he arrived, he looked out of place, thanks to his expensive clothes. Joe, behind the bar, pointed us out and the ascot-wearing man joined us at our table.

The job was simple enough, just a snatch-and-grab of a G-man and ransoming him for some file. It didn’t contain any big secrets or anything: just information on this man’s holdings, as part of their investigation into him. He needed to make a sale, and would pay us out of the profits. Better yet, he said we could pick the target ourselves. We got pictures of where they all worked--some kinda talent agency, if you can believe it--and pictures of whom we would probably end up trading with, a man with a crutch. 

“Wouldn’t it be easiest to just to pick this guy up?” Billy asked, studying the photo of the dark-haired, dark-eyed man. “Being a crip and all?”

“No,” said our fancy new friend. “He’s the soft touch there. You take him and you’ll have more trouble than you bargained for. Take one of his men, though, and this should be smooth sailing. Watch him, watch the agency, and pick up the first man who leaves you an opening.”

The target we ended up moving on was a tall blond man. He didn’t go into the agency, but the man with the crutch met him a few times a week in the evenings, before sending him off to watch this house or that apartment building overnight. 

The blond man lived alone in a rental that wasn’t bad and wasn’t good. He rarely talked to anyone that wasn’t the crippled man, which made him an easier target. We waited until he was on his way home one morning and then used our car to cut him off. He stopped his car just inches from ours and jumped out to yell at us. 

“You’re coming with us,” Billy said. The blond man waited until Billy was almost on top of him and then drew a sidearm from a shoulder holster and cracked him on the head with it. He fought like a man unhinged, but between the two of us we managed to wrestle him into the trunk of our car. I drove his car back to his place and parked it, and then we went up to Billy's place.

Billy’s place is up in the hills, tucked away in the brush. It wasn’t really that far from other houses, but it was far enough that they wouldn’t hear any screaming. The brush gave the impression it was in the middle of nowhere, and that running would be foolish. We let the blond man have a good long look as we let him climb out of the trunk, and we kept our guns on him.

He unfolded himself slowly, drinking it all in.

“I’ve been up all night and you don’t want me dead, so how about you tell me what you do want?” he asked.

“Tell us your name and we’ll let you go into the house and have a nap,” I said cajolingly. “We just want to get something outta your boss. Cooperate, and we’ll send you back in one piece.” 

The blond man started laughing. It went on long enough to be a little unnerving.

“Hey! Hey, stop that,” Billy said. “What’s so funny?”

“What’s funny,” he replied, “is that no one is going to trade you nothin’ for a dead man. But have it your way: my name’s Jack Thompson. Show me to a bed.” 

“Dead man?” Billy mouthed to me as I took Jack by the arm. I shrugged. Inside I put him in the extra bedroom, and handcuffed him to the metal bedframe.

* * *

Jack Thompson slept all day, and we spent time playing cards. We had to give them a few days to miss him, and that meant killing time. In the afternoon, Billy went out to pick up groceries, call the boss to tell him we were underway, and fetch his girl. Amelia is a pretty little slip of a brunette and she’s had it rough enough to know when she has it good. Billy takes care of her and in return she cooks and cleans and looks the other way when we’re on a job. 

The noise of Amelia knocking dinner together must have woken Jack, because he started hollering about needing to take a piss. Billy didn’t want to go in there and get him--his head still ached from where he’d been cracked with the pistol--so I went in and took him into the bathroom and was still holding my gun on him when he came out.

“You’re gonna get mighty tired of holding that on me,” he said. “I have no idea where I am; I’m not going to run if I don’t know which way to go. I don’t have anything to run back to anyway.”

“You have a job, don’t ya?” I asked.

He waggled his hand back and forth. “Unofficially, yeah there’s some stuff that I do. Pays the rent. If you’re gonna feed me and house me, there’s only one more thing you’ll need to make me content enough to stick around until you’re sick of me.”

“What’s that?”

“Bourbon,” he said with a wide smile.

“There’s none,” I said, “but we got a fair amount of the Irish stuff.”

“It’ll do, I guess,” and he headed into the kitchen and sat down at the table. I poured us both a glass. 

Over dinner he told us the wildest stories, none of which I believed. He claimed to know Howard Stark by virtue of having arrested him. In between stealing bits of food off Billy’s plate, Jack hinted broadly that he knew why Whitney Frost had been committed to the insane asylum, and it wasn’t just because her husband drowned. The whole time he was looking Amelia up and down, shooting her smiles and winks and complimenting her cooking. Billy got sick of it and sent Amelia off to their room after dinner. 

Jack got to the bit where he was supposedly emptied the Santa Fe police department with a pair of timed car bombs just to look around, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I suggested we play cards. 

“Sounds good to me,” Jack said. “Get the cash out of my wallet. And where’s that bottle?” 

The bottle was almost half gone, although I hadn’t had more than one drink. It didn’t pay to get sloppy on the job.

The rest of the whiskey vanished in no time and sloppy or not, that son-of-a-gun managed to clean me out.

“Okay, bedtime,” I said.

“I was having fun!” Jack protested as I hauled him to his feet. “Don’t be sore just because you can’t bluff.” 

It usually worked for me just fine, but it didn’t matter. Two more days and he would be gone, and we would be a lot richer. I left Jack handcuffed to the bed again, complaining about how he wasn’t tired.

* * *

In the early hours a terrible wailing woke me, and I ran to see what was the matter. Jack was still handcuffed to his bed, but Amelia was perched astride him. Billy had sunk to his knees on the floor and was sobbing like a child. That was what broke him. He went through the motions in the days after that, but he didn’t seem to care about the money anymore.

So I sent him to take Amelia home to her family, to mail our ransom note and to pick up some bourbon to keep Jack ossified and hopefully not causing any more trouble. I told him to make sure to get two bottles.

The ransom note had been easy enough. We identified the file our client had asked for and provided directions to where we wanted it to be left: taped to the underside of a specific park bench in an open area that would be impossible to watch without being seen. If they hung around to try and follow us back, we just wouldn’t pick up the package. 

Jack started hollering to get up again in the afternoon, apparently used to his night shifts. Billy was back, but at the noise he just shook his head and went outside. I got Jack and put him in the kitchen where I could keep an eye as I started to heat up food.

“Where’s the big guy?” he asked. “Pretty sure he still had a dollar or two I could win off him.”

“He ain’t too happy with you,” I said.

“Oh. Look, the thing with the girl wasn’t my idea. It just seemed more gentlemanly go along with it.”

“Tell it to Billy,” I said. “It’ll be fun to watch him slap you around.”

Without Amelia there, we just had tinned soup with rolls Billy had purchased down in town, and it’s a good thing he got a dozen. Jack ate six of them himself, with most of our butter. At least the awkward situation meant everyone kept their own counsel, but Jack was clearly getting bored again. 

“We can play cards,” I said, “but not for money.”

“What’s the point then?” he asked. The bottle of bourbon was near empty already. 

“I can practice my poker face,” I said. What I wanted was to catch how he was cheating, but I couldn’t figure it out, although we played for a few hours. 

The next day Jack was actually up at noon, probably thanks to the lack of partnership for the ol’ hide-the-sausage. It meant we had to put up with him longer.

“How much longer are you guys going to keep me?” he asked, as he ate all of the bacon I made for the three of us.

“Ransom is due tomorrow,” I said. 

“Can I at least get a shower? Maybe a spare shirt?” he asked. Figuring it would kill some time, I gave him my shirt and left him in the bathroom. Billy wanted nothing to do with it and it was a bit unseemly standing outside the door to listen, but I shoulda done. I went outside for a smoke and when I came back in, water was pouring out of the bathroom and into mine and Billy’s bedrooms.

I swore and ripped the door open. Somehow he had broken the cold water knob clean off, and I had to get under the sink and shut the water off in there entirely. He sauntered out of the bathroom wearing only damp briefs and my shirt and carrying his suit as if he hadn’t done anything wrong.

I thought that Billy might get mad, but when he came in he just sighed and shook his head and handcuffed Jack to the bed again.

“At least give me some more bourbon if you’re gonna leave me alone in here!” Jack called.

Billy got out the mops and we set to cleaning up. 

“I have a bad feeling,” Billy said as we soaked up the water.

“It’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll get the file tomorrow and then we’ll get paid, and we can let him go.”

“Don’t know who would ransom anything for that son-of-a-bitch,” Billy murmured. “Let’s take him with us when we go down to get the file. Then we can let him go right away, and I can be sure he won’t burn down the house while we’re gone.”

I started to answer and was interrupted by a big crash coming from you-know-where. We went in to see Jack had started to jimmy apart the metal bed frame and succeeded in detaching the headboard from the rest of it. He was still handcuffed to the headboard though, the cuff between two rails that were welded. Billy left the room. 

“Where are you going to go with that?” I asked Jack. “You won’t fit out the window like that, so I don’t suggest you break it. The skeeters up here are enough to eat you alive.” Billy came back and nearly threw the last bottle of bourbon at Jack, and went back to cleaning up.

In the morning we drove to the park and watched the man with the crutch place a file under the bench. He left promptly after, not even looking around. It didn’t appear to be watched, so Billy went to pick it up and then we drove a few blocks away, checking for a tail. When we were sure we were clear, we pulled into an alley to read what was left. 

The folder that was left contained none of the requested information. Instead it had a short reply to our request and a newspaper clipping.

It said only this: _We don’t pay ransom, especially not for dead men._

The newspaper clip was an obituary for a Thompson, and the picture matched the guy we had in the trunk. It was longer than usual, and went into great detail about his military decorations and how he died in service as a G-man. 

It was dated four months previous. When Billy saw it, he went pale and started shaking.

“Did we kidnap a ghost?” he asked.

“A spook, more like it,” I said. I opened up the trunk, and like before Jack took his time climbing out of it. He looked at us expectantly.

“What is this is supposed to mean?” I asked, thrusting the obituary at him. 

He smiled. “I told you boys when you took me: I’m dead.”

“Officially dead, maybe.” I said. “You’re standing here real enough, and we saw you with that Sousa guy with the crutch, so I know he knows you ain’t dead.”

Jack shrugged. “Sure, but I’m officially dead. No skin off his nose if I die; he won’t have to explain my death. It’s not like he needs someone in the black to do surveillance for him either; it’s merely convenient.”

“Then why do it?” I asked. 

“I don’t care,” Billy announced. “Sam, let’s go. We’ll leave him here. This has been nothing but trouble. We did what we were told; not our fault it didn’t work. We go now, there won’t be no more trouble.”

“You’re right, Billy. I’m tired of buying booze for him anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

We left Jack standing there, looking disinterested. He was too cool, but I couldn’t decide if he was the most clever man I had met or the stupidest. If he was telling the truth, he had a lot more problems than being kidnapped for a couple days.

**Author's Note:**

>  [Suggested Reading Order for my canon compliant post S2 fics](http://katiekeysburg.tumblr.com/post/162241330814/ever-wonder-what-order-my-post-season-2-agent)


End file.
